


Sweet Supernova

by FroldGapp



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alien Biology, F/M, Family, Family Fluff, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Galra Keith (Voltron), Gen, Other, badass krolia, young keith
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-07
Updated: 2018-03-07
Packaged: 2019-03-28 07:21:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13899126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FroldGapp/pseuds/FroldGapp
Summary: Some pre-Keith drabbles from Krolia and Mr Kogane.





	1. Desert Raisin'

**Author's Note:**

> Drabblin'! British English so ' and not ", etc.
> 
> Get at me: https://froldgapp.tumblr.com
> 
> No beta lulz

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How to grow an alien child.

It’s been a long, sweltering day, and Kogane's been imagining the first cool glass of ginger beer since lunch. Pulling his hoverbike onto the cabin’s little slip road he is disappointed but utterly unsurprised to see two dark lumps lying on a sun-bleached portion of the porch, one much smaller than the other.

‘Oh, brother,’ he sighs and opens up the throttle.

Mother and child are lying stretched out like dried starfish in an unsheltered patch of sunlight. He wouldn’t mind so much except it’s thirty-eight degrees Celsius and his son looks red as a newborn rat. He clomps up the steps and reaches down to gather up the three-year-old whose skin is hot enough to sizzle the sweat on his forearms. Stepping into the shade, he considers his partner. There is an honest-to-goodness spiny lizard resting between her hair and the crook of her neck. He does not want to think about the scorpions who might confuse a toddler’s open mouth with a nice place to rest.

‘Krolia,’ he sighs. Nothing. Keith is like a ragdoll in his arms. His lips are so dry they’re cracking. ‘Krolia,’ he says with more urgency. 

She cracks an eye open, sees Keith in his arms, and has the audacity to make grabby hands at him.

He clutches Keith tighter. ‘No way.’ He makes a face as she rolls her eyes. ‘You can’t keep dragging our boy into this kind of heat, Krolia.’

‘S’good for a growing boy.’ She yawns luxuriously then rolls onto her belly and pushes herself onto her hands and knees. ‘Vitamins.’

‘You’re confusing vitamins with heatstroke.’

‘You’re confusing this.’ She points to her unbothered face. ‘With me giving a fuck.’

Toeing open the door to the house, Kogane mumbles, ‘Got to get rid of the TV.’

Krolia stands and floats after him. ‘He looks so healthy! Look at the flush in those cheeks!’

‘He looks like a raisin,’ Kogane says, pushing some sweat damp hair from his son’s forehead. 'And that flush is sunburn.' He purses his lips. 'Maybe.'

‘You said raisins were the grapes of the desert.’ A light kiss on his cheek and she’s already trying to collect Keith again. ‘My little raisin.’

Kogane steps out of her hungry reach and strolls to the kitchen to fetch his child some water. He let’s the tap run a little to clear the pipes then splashes Keith’s face. Violet eyes pop open, and a delighted gasp issues from his smiling mouth as he clocks both his parents standing shoulder to shoulder. Krolia claps her hands together, while Kogane bounces him in his arms. He squeals, elated. Krolia sputters a laugh, and Kogane laughs too. It's normal, nice. Nothing he would have expected when he was almost savaged by a wandering alien in the caves near the cabin.

Fun over, Keith squirms in his arms. He is unnaturally supple, even for a child, and has copied his mother's tactic of dislocating body parts when inconvenienced by silly things like handcuffs (Krolia) or playpens (Keith). ‘Okay, buddy, down you go,’ he says, straining just a touch. Keith is heavier than he looks.

The moment Keith’s bare feet touch the ground, he’s racing off again: back out through the door and onto the porch where he throws himself down in a pool of sunlight.

Krolia’s face is painfully smug. She pinches his cheek and grins. ‘Your looks, my tough. Chin up, Earthling.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Get at me! https://froldgapp.tumblr.com


	2. You Can't Throw People Out of Planes

The slamming door shakes the entire house to its foundations. Dust showers from the ceiling and the doorknob to the toilet falls off with a clunk then rolls in a semi-circle towards his feet.

‘Hi, honey!’ Kogane calls and lays down his tablet. His partner doesn’t answer immediately. He can hear her kicking off her boots and jamming her keys onto the hook. She marches into the room with her shoulders up to her ears and her fists clench. She is no less ferocious in her human form; all sharp-eyed and tight-lipped. Her pet dagger, as always, is strapped to her side. A nerve is bouncing on her temple.

‘Urgh,’ she says, then steps out of her work jumpsuit and stands in her vest and shorts. His vest and shorts. 

She closes her eyes and concentrates. He watches, rapt, as a soft bluish-purple glow starts from just south of her collarbone. Quintessence mist drifts from her as she stretches back to her full galra height. Her ears pop out like two curious birds from her healthy nest of hair. He tries his very best to look as though it isn't the most mind-blowingly hot sight he's ever likely to see. Her quirked eyebrow suggests she's onto him.

‘Good day at work?’ he asks?

She stomps towards him and throws herself down on the couch. Her pout is Olympian.

Swings an arm around her shoulder and squeezing, he speaks into her neck. She smells like engine oil and burnt butter. ‘Want some sweetcorn?’

She loves sweetcorn. He can’t explain it. Sweetcorn and ketchup is her favourite. She calls it ‘cornchup’: the cuteness of which balances out the gastronomical horror of the combination. She would live on the stuff if she could. 

'Yes. Now. Please.'

He ambles into the kitchen and returns with an open can.

‘What happened?’

‘Got fired.’ She picks up his tea and drains it.

‘Why?’ He pours another cup from the little pot and lifts it to his mouth. 

‘Threw some filthy weblum-fucker off my plane.’

He almost chokes on the first sip. ‘Krolia! You can’t throw people out of planes!’

She looks at him squarely. ‘Why? We were still on the runway. Besides, he had a parachute.’

After he’s recovered ( _ several _ sips of tea), he asks her for the lowdown. Apparently some jerk on her cargo service got handsy when they were loading on. He then sat at the back and during taxi talked shit about her.  _ She can take off, but can she park it? Haw Haw.  _ The 'weblum-fucker'  did not account for a) Galra hearing, and b) Galra tempers.

‘Krolia,’ he begins, balking slightly at the narrowing of her catlike eyes. He lifts up his hands and starts massaging her broad shoulders. ‘You’re totally right to feel angry. That guy is an asshole. But the police… our, eh, situation...’

‘Nobody called the police. The other passengers applauded.’

‘They applauded. And the ground crew? The management?’

'Applauded. And applauded.'

He admires the sinuous lines of her back as she slips from his hold and leans forward and picks up the tin of sweetcorn. She eats it quickly, jabbing her claws into the can and popping each kernel into her mouth in quick succession. She speaks as she swallows. ‘Yeap.’ The tin makes little chiming noises as her claws connect.

‘So the firing?’

She shrugs. ‘You Earthlings are obsessed with paperwork; I don’t know.’

He sees that she has a paper bag from a pharmacy stuffed into the pocket of her shorts. ‘What’s that?’ he asks, grimacing as she drains the sweetcorn tin of its juice.

She leans against the couch. Her expression suggests that she’s about to throw him out of a plane too.

‘We’re in trouble,’ she says. Her squat claws tug at his waistband. Her brows tug down and her stormy eyes search for what she wants to say. Words are tricky for her: his guarded supernova. ‘I’ve missed my tergestrial movement.’

‘You’ve missed your…’

‘We are with child.’

'Ah.' He considers embraces her, but instead stands. 'This is going to need a bigger can of sweetcorn.'


	3. Howl at the Stars

‘What happened?’ Krolia’s stare is enough to melt glass.

‘He’s mad at me for telling Mr Thorton we’ll try harder learning our animals. Says I'm a "bad boy."’

Keith tears from Kogane’s grasp and runs crying to his mother.

Keith seldom cries. He is altogether a robust and happy child. As he tumbled about his toddling phase, both Kogane and Krolia learned not to fuss when he bumped his head or toppled off whatever height he was exploring. The grit is without doubt a Galra trait. Once, when he caught Krolia chewing up an infant snake and feeding it to him, he accused her of being hard-headed. She'd thanked him as though he told her she had great legs.

Where their boy is diamond-tough physically, freakishly unfussy, and generally unbothered by daily things like bedtimes and having his thick hair brushed, there are two things that are sure to set him off: unfairness and the suffering of others. He’d once made the three of them sit through a lengthy and bizarre funeral service for a twig he’d found stuck in the drainpipe, and God save anyone who tried to cheat him or anyone else. Keith is a relentless biter who doles out punishment swiftly if he thinks someone is breaking the rules of social convention. The little crescent of bite marks around Kogane's thumb are still stinging. 

Watching Keith whinge miserably against his mother’s legs, he tries to remind himself of the vastness of time and that in twenty minutes, this will all be over.

‘He lost a gold star at kindergarten for insisting that this,’ Kogane holds aloft a picture of a horse, ‘is not a horse.’

‘Norvak!’ Keith squeals, and renews his crying.

‘Krolia, if we send him to school, we can’t carry on teaching him animals that… aren’t from this planet.’

She presses Keith’s head to her leg with one large hand. She still looks like she’s about to tear somebody’s head off. Maybe his. Maybe the teacher’s. ‘And what is a horse but a four-legged norvak?’ she asks.

‘Krolia,’ he encourages, edging towards her. Keith scampers behind her long legs and peers out from the space between them, furious and snotty. ‘We have to start teaching him that there are certain things we can only talk about at home.’

She holds his gaze for a long beat, then nods slowly. These moments are growing ever more common as Keith grows and ventures out more. Her son doesn’t look like a Galra, no longer speaks Galra with her for fear he’ll ferry it into school, and soon he won’t even be able to tell his horses from his norvaks. Kogane reaches out and pushed his fingers into her thick hair.

'I'm sorry. I know it's not fair.'

‘I don’t want to tame our son,’ she says. ‘He’s perfect. Just how he is.’

Kogane pulls her towards him and they embrace. A beat later, he feels their son muscle his way between them. He reaches down, feels the fine hair like silk between his fingers. ‘I know.’

‘I’ll talk to him,’ she says.

‘Good,’ he replies. ‘It’s for the best.’

And she does. After supper, she takes Keith onto the porch to stargaze with him as is their habit. Kogane listens at the door, comfortable with his role as sometimes-intruder in their odd but loving triangle. Keith is clever, and at first, tests her with Galra, knowing there is some parental scheming afoot. But she is steadfast and speaks English. She explains why he should too. Never Galra. Not anymore. Because they are playing. They are all playing at belonging here.

Kogane frowns, knowing it to be true: human or not. He slips away from the door and puts the kettle on to boil. Just as he’s pouring steaming water into the waiting teapot, a rich baying starts up right outside the door, followed by raucous laughter and a chorus of chirruping giggles. He closes his eyes and smiles.

Outside, mother and son are lying snuggled together on their backs, their faces to the stars. Krolia sees him emerge from behind the door and her eyes twinkle. She throws back her head and howls, lips forming an adorable ‘O’ shape. Keith follows suit, his ‘howl’ like a piccolo. Resigned to the madness that constitutes his life, Kogane steps onto the porch and lies down on Keith’s other side. Shimmying close, Keith glances at him with eyes full of mischief. He tosses his head, pulls in a breath that swells his tiny chest, and howls again. Krolia joins him, hers rich and tuneful. Kogane shrugs, shakes his head and joins his family’s chorus: joyful, singing to the stars.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hit me uppp: https://froldgapp.tumblr.com


End file.
